“He sent cash over as a binder. Two months’ worth.” The manager shrugged his negligible shoulders. “Before that, this space just gathered dust. Though I advertised heavily, I couldn’t give it away. In my business when cash speaks, I listen.”
McKinsey looked around the space. “So what was going on down here?”
The manager shrugged.
McKinsey stared at him. “You’re a real font of knowledge, aren’t you?”
“You never got curious?” Naomi said.
“I was paid a lot of money not to be curious. A stipulation from my tenant.”
Naomi tapped a pen against the side of her smartphone. “So, basically, they could have been auctioning off little girls down here and you wouldn’t know about it.”
The manager gave no indication that he knew anything.
“We came down here through the restaurant,” McKinsey said.
“There’s a back entrance,” the manager replied. “I was told to keep the lights off in that area.”
“So where is everyone?” Naomi said.
“They must have moved out late last night. I was here until closing—around midnight—and I didn’t see anything.”
“Of course you didn’t,” McKinsey muttered.
The manager leaned forward. “Pardon?”
“How do we get into this space behind the glass?” Naomi said.
“Like I said—”
A little yelp exploded from the manager’s mouth when McKinsey smashed the glass with his elbow, then began to pick out the remaining shards from the frame. Naomi trained her flashlight on the interior. It was a perfect square, small, airless. A faint but unmistakable sickly sweet scent came to her.
“It smells like death in there,” she said.
The manager whimpered. He held up his hands. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Too late for that,” McKinsey said as he watched Naomi carefully climb through the shattered window. “What have we got?” he asked her.
“A whole lot of nothing.” The beam of her flashlight lit up the corners of the space. “Odd, though, the floor in here is wooden planks.”
“An older part of the subbasement,” McKinsey offered.
“Right.” Then the beam came to rest. “Hold on a minute.” Crouched down, she snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
McKinsey leaned in. “Whatcha got?”
“One of these boards has something on it.” She played the beam directly on it. “I think it’s blood, Pete.”
Lifting an adjacent board, she played the beam of light into the space beneath. She bent her head down for a better look, and coughed heavily. “Fresh blood.”
FOURTEEN
THE SWORD hung in the sky, glittering, remote. It revealed itself through a rent in the thick cloud cover, a sword full of blue-white stars. Jack took a deep breath of the humid air. It was filled with strange scents, just as the night was filled with strange sounds.
Behind him, the jet crouched, having landed on a runway Jack had no doubt was not on any map or near any inhabited area. It was silent, dark. Just beyond was the verge of a thick evergreen forest, its canopy, like groping fingers, mimicking the rough-hewn tors of the Korab mountain range that rose ahead of them. Somewhere up there was Tetovo, impregnable, teeming with Xhafa’s men, bristling with high-tech weaponry.
They were in western Macedonia, behind enemy lines. Their world had contracted into a red zone, a potential killing field. It was essential, Paull had told them just before landing, that they keep this in mind every minute of the day and night until such time as they made it back here and the plane took off.
While Paull broke out their weaponry and outerwear for the trek, Jack took Alli aside.
“I really need you to keep an eye on the kid.”
She looked at him with her clear eyes. “You don’t think I killed Billy, do you?”
“Don’t be absurd.” He took a breath. “But what I can’t figure out is why you lied about Arjeta Kraja. You obviously did know her.”
“Billy introduced her to me.”
“Did you think you were protecting her?”
“After they showed me what had happened to Billy I knew her life was in danger. I thought if no one knew about her involvement then maybe she had a chance to stay alive, but if all of a sudden cops and Feds came after her I knew she wouldn’t survive the next twenty-four hours.”
“So you knew about Dardan.”
She shook her head. “Neither Billy nor Arjeta mentioned him or the sex slave auction. I had no idea about that place.”
“Why would your uncle have a take-out menu from First Won Ton? And why was spicy fragrant duck with cherries circled in pencil? Cherries. It’s possible he knew about the Stem.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to think.”
“You know him better than I do, better than almost anyone.”
“Actually, no.” Alli looked pained. “My parents would take me to his house, but he rarely spoke to me. I got the impression he didn’t like kids, including his own daughter.”
“He had a daughter?”
“Caroline.” Alli’s eyes lost focus as she allowed memories to surface. “Caro was a strange girl.”
“Strange how?”
For a moment, Alli seemed lost in thought. “For one thing, she wasn’t interested in normal sorts of things— you know, music, movies, talking on the phone, clothes shopping, boys.”
“So what was she into?”
Alli shrugged. “Who knows. Secrets?”
“Secrets?”
“Yeah, she was always disappearing—no one knew where she went, not Uncle Hank or her mom, Heidi. It would drive them crazy, especially Uncle Hank, who likes everything done his way. I’m guessing that’s why Heidi left.”
Jack considered for a moment. “Do you have any idea what happened to Caroline?”
“No. It was like she disappeared off the face of the earth. One night she walked out of the house and never came back.”
“How old was she?”
Alli bit her lip. “Thirteen, maybe. That was nine, ten years ago.”
“So she’d be twenty-two, twenty-three now. And nothing since then?”
Alli shook her head. “She could be alive or dead, no one knows.”
“Someone must know,” Jack said.
“Do you think her disappearance is relevant to Billy’s murder?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “But I keep coming back to that take-out menu you found in your uncle’s study.”
“It seems both irrelevant and somehow important. I mean, he wouldn’t be caught dead eating Chinese take- out.”
“Which is why it’s sticking in my mind,” Jack said. “Anomalies are always important.”
Alli stared at him for a minute. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering if there’s a link between the Stem, that take-out menu, and Caroline.”
“You think Caro was kidnapped and auctioned off?”
“I’m wondering if that’s the direction your uncle is going in.”
“But if he knows about what was going on at the Stem, why didn’t he have it shut down?”
